From the March 3, 2013, Chicago Tribune "The papal mystique endures" by Ron Grossman.
There certainly has been a lot of news of late regarding the election of the new pope in Rome. Wishing the new pope, Francis, the best of luck.
The Tribune ran an expanded focus on the Papal legacy. Here is some information about the Catholic Church.
The pope presides over a church called Catholic, which means "universal." The pope's Latin title "papa" comes from the way children address their fathers. The papacy was already old when rival forms of Christianity were born and for centuries had a monopoly on defining faith.
Early kings and emperors learned how to run their countries from the popes.
The pope is the unquestioned spiritual leader and a territorial monarch, although his realm has now been reduced to Vatican City, but it once covered the entire Papal States.
And, the papacy has outlasted the Roman Empire, which was around when Christianity started and the Holy Roman Empire which replaced it. Then, Napoleon's empire vanished and Pope Pius VII got the Papal States back which the emperor had taken from him. Even Soviet leader Josef Stalin once dismissed the pope with "How many divisions has he got?" but his Iron Curtain is no more either.
More to Come.
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